observed, with a glance around, “you will get out of this, Roger. Pity you could not have let the fellow know what you did at Harvard and Oxford in boxing.”
“No time to tell him anything,” Roger replied, thrusting the gear shift into reverse. “I couldn’t even warn him. He came at me like a mad bull.”
They backed noiselessly to the corner, swung around and crawled up to the entrance of the pink-and-white villa on the hillside. The girl seemed to have got over her terror and was making queer little noises in her throat. Roger glanced at her questioningly. Suddenly he realised that she was laughing. Her eyes were dancing with happiness, her brown face had puckered up into creases of mirth, her soft, delicately shaped mouth was quivering, no longer with fear. She was clasping and unclasping the long fingers of her scratched but shapely brown hands and swaying from side to side in rhythmical content.
“What the mischief are you going to do with her?” his friend demanded.
“Heaven knows,” Roger answered.
Madame Vinay, cuisinière and housekeeper, summoned from the kitchen, was inclined to take a gloomy view of the situation.
“He is a bad man, Pierre Viotti,” she declared, “but he is the mayor and he owns all the land, the épicerie and the café. He does what he pleases with the girls and all the people about the place. If Monsieur has touched him, he will probably go to prison.”
“Oh, la, la,” the girl laughed gaily. “Has Monsieur seen Henri our gendarme? He is no bigger than I am. Monsieur Viotti—he is the strongest man in the village and voilà, Monsieur l’a battu.”
“Where are your father and mother?” Roger asked.
The girl shook her head. Madame Vinay explained.
“The child’s father and mother never lived in the village, Monsieur. Her mother taught in the school and her father was a foreman at Molinard’s, the perfume factory in Grasse. They died within a few weeks of one another and her grandmother brought her here. Now the old grandmother is herself dead since last week. What is to become of the child no one knows. The Curé has concerned himself in the matter, but Monsieur le Maire wishes her for his house. Just now there is work for all in the fields, but afterwards—well, Pierre Viotti is the mayor and what can one do?”
The child calmly stretched out her long arm, helped herself to an apple from a dish on the sideboard and began to eat it. “I will never work for Monsieur Viotti,” she declared firmly. “He is a bad man. All the children in the village are afraid of him and so am I. I will pick the blossom for Monsieur here,” she added, her eyes laughing into Roger’s.
“The Curé is in the kitchen,” Madame Vinay observed. “He might have advice to give. After what has happened, the child would be better away from the neighbourhood altogether.”
“By all means let us consult him,” Roger agreed. “Fetch him at once, Madame.”
Madame Vinay rustled out and the Curé presently made his appearance in her company. He was an elderly man, rotund in shape and with few of the graces of life, but his expression was pleasant and he was at once helpful.
“Monsieur,” he said earnestly to Roger, “what you have done may indeed turn out to be a fortunate action. We are all bound to respect Monsieur le Maire, who is a hard-working man and has amassed much money. Nevertheless he is not a fitting guardian for the child.”
“He is a beast!” the latter declared vehemently, her white, beautifully shaped teeth crunching once more into the apple.
“What I should like to do,” Roger Sloane explained, “is to find the child reputable employment and a safe home until she is old enough to decide for herself what she would like to do. I will be responsible for any money that is necessary and if you will help me in this matter, Monsieur le Curé, I will with pleasure give a donation to your poor.”
“I wish to remain with Monsieur,” the child begged. “I will work for him. I will be obedient. I will do what I am told.”
Madame Vinay, who was standing in the background, coughed.
“In the village,” she said severely, “they say that you obey no one.”
“In the village,” the child scoffed. “But that is different. Here I will obey you, Madame Vinay. I will obey Monsieur.”
“What do you think, Monsieur?” Sloane asked.
The Curé hesitated.
“Jeannine is a strange child but I believe that she has good qualities,” he pronounced. “They say in the village that she fights all the time.”
“I only fight if I am touched,” she cried. “I will not be touched by those others. When they leave me alone, I behave.”
The Curé scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“If Monsieur would try her for a week,” he suggested.
The girl sprang suddenly to her feet and danced around the room, her arms waving, her legs moving to some strange measure. They stared at her in astonishment. Madame Vinay sighed and shook her head. The Curé only smiled.
“They say that her mother once wished to be a danseuse,” he confided. “The child is difficult but I have found her truthful.”
She came to a sudden pause in front of Sloane, dropped almost on one knee, seized his hand and kissed it. Then she stood up again.
“I will obey you,” she promised. “I will pick your blossoms faster than any one has picked them before. I will do everything that Madame Vinay tells me.”
Roger Sloane drew a deep sigh of relief. He found himself wondering why he was so persistently anxious to avoid looking into the depths of those questioning brown eyes with their strange lights.
“That’s all arranged then,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “You and I can get on our way to Nice, Pips.”
In Nice the two young men spent an evening of masculine, but restrained hilarity. Upon their arrival Roger strolled upon the Promenade des Anglais and watched the sunset while his companion went to his hotel and changed his attire. Afterwards they visited the Casino, drank cocktails and amused themselves playing midget golf. They dined at a famous restaurant, gambled for an hour or two at the Palais de la Mediterranée, supped at Maxim’s and even danced. At three o’clock Roger dropped his friend at his hotel and drove homeward through the velvety darkness. For the last ten kilometres the road wound its way through the flower-growing country and already the carts were crawling along the lanes to pick up their cargoes of blossoms. Once or twice Roger paused by the wayside to listen to the nightingales and to feel the queer fascination of the silence before the morning. The first pencil shaft of light was creeping into the sky when he reached the villa. He drove his car into the garage, locked it up and mounted to his room by the back stairs. He walked with light footsteps and a smile upon his lips. After the meretricious and somewhat futile straining after pleasure of a night spent in crowded rooms, of gambling, noisy music and overheated atmospheres, the coolness and perfume of his own home delighted him. He felt like the boy Marius on his way to his bed in the mountain monastery, with the life of the cities far behind and the purity and sweetness of the country already like a sweet tonic in his blood…. Then, during his last few steps, his fingers outstretched towards the handle of his door, he came to a sudden standstill. There was an old-fashioned Provençal bench outside which looked as though it had been made from a discarded refectory table. Seated upon it, wrapped in an old dressing gown of flaming red, probably a loan from Madame, was Jeannine!
Her eyes shone up into his, her quivering lips parted expectantly. He was astonished to find how sternly he could speak.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Je ne fais pas de mal,” she faltered, a little frightened at his tone. ”Je vous attendais.”
“But why?”
Her